Court rules against long-range transportation plan

A nearly $200 billion road map charting how a growing San Diego County will meet its transportation demands over the next four decades may have to be redrawn.

San Diego County Superior Court Judge Timothy Taylor this week ruled that the plan fails to comply with state environmental laws that aim to reduce greenhouse gas emissions linked to global warming.

The transportation blueprint adopted by the San Diego Association of Governments includes 130 new highway lanes, 156 miles of trolley service and nearly as$4 billion in bicycle and pedestrian projects.

Despite the ruling, any immediate disruption of transit funding and projects is unlikely.

“There is nothing in the ruling that addresses that. I don’t think there’s any reason to be alarmed,” said Rachel Hooper, an attorney representing the Cleveland National Forest Foundation, one of the groups successfully challenging the SANDAG plan.

The next step will be to offer the judge a series of “remedies” to address the flaws, Hooper said. She declined to be specific.

“We would like to meet and confer with SANDAG to talk about remedies,” she said.

Colleen Windsor, a SANDAG spokeswoman, said the board will be meeting Friday in close session to discuss the ruling.

“We still stand by (the plan),” she said. “We feel we have met the requirements.”

Jack Shu, president of the Cleveland National Forest Foundation board, said the ruling should wake up San Diego County residents and community leaders to the possibility that SANDAG has not been forthright in revealing the long range consequences of its plan. Nor, has it provided meaningful measures to mitigate the added pollution and other drawbacks.

“The real work is just beginning,” Shu said. “This is just an initial win that says the emperor has no clothes.”

Shu said the SANDAG board was repeatedly warned in hearings that the plan failed to meet legal standards.

“We did everything we could to avoid litigation. They brushed us off,” he said.

The forest foundation, along with state Attorney General Kamala Harris and others, filed the lawsuit, claiming that the SANDAG plan failed to adequately analyze the impacts on air quality and did not fully address greenhouse gas emissions.

Those emissions will increase after 2020 under the SANDAG plan, even though state law mandates a reduction, said Hooper.

“This was not revealed to the public or decision-makers in the proper way,” she said.

Hooper said she does not expect this case to set statewide precedent as other regional planning agencies develop their goals.

“I don’t think the take-away should be there will be more lawsuits,” Hooper said. “Other agencies are looking at turning away from auto-centric plans. SANDAG’s plan seemed to be rooted in transportation principles we saw in the 1960s: the more cars you have the more freeway lanes you add.”

Critics also claim that SANDAG failed to prioritize alternative transportation that would reduce emissions. For example, SANDAG put freeway spending up front and delayed other projects such as mass transit and programs to encourage walking and bicycling, they said.

Climate change poses a number of risks to the San Diego region. For example, it could lead to sea level rise, threatening beach communities. Also, global warming could result in longer, dryer hot spells, foreshadowing more ferocious wildfires.

The judge poked at SANDAG for deferring action on some of the longer range impacts, saying it’s nothing more than a “kick the can down the road” strategy. He also was critical of SANDAG for encouraging optional localized plans to address emissions. That approach falls “well short of a legally enforceable mitigation commitment with teeth,” Taylor wrote.

Taylor expects the case to be appealed.

“This court is but a way station in the life of this case” and is “clearly headed” to an appellate court, Taylor said in his ruling.

The ruling came as no surprise. Just before Thanksgiving Taylor issued a tentative decision along the same lines.